GETTR fired IT and cybersecurity teams amid financial problems, former employees say

Social media upstart GETTR fired over a dozen staff members late last year, including two key executives and its entire IT and cybersecurity teams, amid rapid growth and what former employees said were funding problems.

The layoffs came even as interest in the company, founded by Jason Miller, a spokesman for former President Donald Trump, exploded. But three people who were canned say that behind the scenes, GETTR is struggling with more than just growing pains, warning that the recent round of layoffs may have jeopardized the platform’s security.

“In all honesty, in my 24 years of doing cybersecurity, I’ve never seen a company this poorly run from business operations all the way to IT,” a former top GETTR executive told the Washington Examiner. “It looks like a high school operation.”

At least 13 members of GETTR’s online security and infrastructure teams, including the platform’s chief information officer and its chief information security officer, were let go on Dec. 28, 2021, less than three months after they were first hired, the former executives said. The teams were not replaced, they said, leaving the company vulnerable to online threats. The employees said they were told that the company could no longer afford to employ them and was undergoing a major restructuring.

STRUGGLES OF GETTR APP ILLUSTRATE DILEMMA FACING TEAM TRUMP

GETTR’s head of human resources at the time of the firings, Felicia Blasberg, also left the company at the end of December amid the shake-up.

GETTR declined to comment on the layoffs, but Miller said the company he launched last summer as a free speech-oriented, anti-cancel culture alternative to Twitter remains healthy.

"As a company policy and out of respect for former and current employees, we do not comment on personnel matters,” Miller said in a statement via email.

“Our position remains strong, with over 4.5 million users, and this month we'll be releasing Vision, our short video format which will compete with TikTok and Instagram reels."

GETTR got a huge boost just days after the layoffs when podcasting giant Joe Rogan joined. Rogan helped bring in a million new users, shooting the platform’s mobile app into the top 10 most downloaded social media apps on the Apple App Store earlier this month.

Before that, for a period last year, GETTR was the most downloaded app on the Android App Store and Google Play.

Rogan subsequently criticized GETTR, though, saying it inflated his follower count.

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Several of the ousted employees pointed the finger not at Miller but at key investor Guo Wengui. A Chinese exile and vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party, Guo and his hand-picked chief technology officer, Joe Wang, clashed frequently with the IT and cybersecurity teams over how to improve the platform while maintaining security protocols, multiple former employees said.

“Jason Miller played no part in the decision, it was all Guo,” a former GETTR security executive told the Washington Examiner.

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